


To Those Who Love Us Best

by Northisnotup



Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Found Family, Gen, Honey you got a storm coming and his name is Juno Steel, Hurricane Juno, Hurt/Comfort, Injury, Medical Attention, Minor Peter Nureyev/Juno Steel, Stream of Consciousness, familial tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-14
Updated: 2021-02-14
Packaged: 2021-03-14 21:20:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,647
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29425194
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Northisnotup/pseuds/Northisnotup
Summary: Injured on a mission, Rita puts on a brave face for Mistah Jet while Mz. Vespa patches her up.
Relationships: Rita & Juno Steel
Comments: 7
Kudos: 61
Collections: TPP Valentine's Exchange





	To Those Who Love Us Best

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SarcasticSargassum](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SarcasticSargassum/gifts).



> **CONTENT WARNING** there are some mentions of bugs and spiders, they are ONLY mentions, but here is your warning!
> 
> Hello Ceph! I happy valentines day, I hope you like this. I loved your prompts and I especially want to thank you because this scene has been on my to-write list for months and this gave me JUST the kick in the pants to finally get it out there. I have to say, when I first started it, I did not expect it to be a Rita pov, but there we have it. 
> 
> Thank you to Ivy and Layla, for ooh-ing and awe-ing, to Rox for holding my hand, to Blue for inspiring me to keep writing and to Aphelant and Ivy again for the beta!

Mistah Jet has really, really, really big hands. 

Broad and square with sweaty palms and veins bulging over knuckles flexed so hard they remind Rita of ten little itsy bitsy ghosts. Rita's got no idea how the man does all the tiny, fiddly detail work that the Ruby7 needs. Her hand in the middle of both of his looks like a doll's hand. Oh! Or, there was a stream she watched a while back, this little lady who was born when a flower bloomed out of a wish and she was so small she could wrap herself around her mom's thumb and give it a great big hug and she fell in love with a pixie prince but she didn't have any wings, so -

!!!

Rita ain’t sure what kinda noise wants to come outta her mouth but it gets caught behind her teeth as a kind of low jittery moan that reminds her of all the dead-walkers on _Dead by Dawn._ Misah Jet's hands tighten around hers and he probably says something like: _‘The pain you are feeling is a mist that will disperse naturally as the water molecules in the air warm and evaporate,’_ or somethin’ like that. Or maybe that was just the weather channel that she woke up to looping this morning after her streams had all finished. 

See, she's thinkin' all this, about Mistah Jet's hands and about the little-as-a-thumb lady and now about the weather, to distract herself. And not like normal distract herself, like when Mz. Buddy is goin' on, and on, and on about something but meaning something else or Mz. Vespa is gettin' angry 'cause it's easier than being afraid, or when Mistah…

When Mistah Ransom is sayin' a lot of words but not saying anything at all, really. 

So, not like any of that but more like to distract herself from the bright points of pain that strobe and flash up her side like a big awful, nauseating disco ball when Mz. Vespa does...whatever she's doing down there. 

Normally, not knowing exactly what’s happening to her would drive Rita to distraction all on its own. But. This time. This one, _specific_ time, she’s actually pretty okay with not knowing everything. Or anything. At all. 

Streams with gallons of fake blood and screaming performers are one thing, but the first time Rita tried to watch an educational stream about medicine or physiology, she'd gone vegetarian for a month! 

Well, two weeks... 

Okay, okay! It was three days but it was a hard three days! And every time after that, when she'd thought to herself, 'Rita, it's just your body, everyone's got a body! Let's see what's going on under all that skin,' she regretted it half an hour into whatever program she tried. And it’s not like she ain’t used to a little blood, either! Rita knows her way around a medkit, alright. Knows how to pin bandages in place and apply cold packs for swelling and what medicines you can get at the pharmacy and which ones that...uh...someone could take together without it being bad.

Just, y’know, anyone. No one specifically. 

She feels her chin start to wobble without her permission and tries to take a deep breath, but it hiccups in her chest and comes out all stuttering. Normally she would shake this all out, just like when her second mom would tell her to get the ants outta her pants and she’d wiggle her whole body til she felt better but, well - 

“How many times am I gonna have to tell you to stay still? You squirm one more time, hacker, and I’ll-” Mz. Vespa growls. Her hands are steady and sure from the little bit Rita lets herself look. That's the thing with Mz. Vespa. See, for months and months Rita was never sure what to think about her. ‘Cause she's all… Well, she's very... 

She's real mean and real scary and she's always got a knife and she yells about everything all the time and at first it was really funny 'cause... 

Well, just 'cause is all! 

But then Rita noticed her hands. Her whole body really. She talks like she should be moving a whole bunch but she don't! She talks like she would be rough and grabby and a big ol' bully but she ain't. Mz. Vespa keeps herself so still and even when she's got a knife in her hand she's smooth and sure of every movement she makes. 

It's so cool. Like some kind of hero from an action stream!

And that's about when Rita realized that Mz. Vespa _was_ real scary, but she was a good scary. She would be scary _for_ Rita before she would really be scary _at_ Rita, if that makes sense. 

But Rita’s still glad she’s got her surgical mask on. Not because she ain’t pretty! Mz. Vespa’s got this sleek sort of look, like one of her fancy knives, sharp features and sharper eyes. But she ain’t one of those ladies who’s all bark, no bite and Rita’s never not flinched when Mz. Vespa turned that scowl on her.

Thankfully, Rita never finds out what Mz. Vespa says she’ll do this time, ‘cause just then she pulls (or maybe pushes?) against Rita’s side and pain lights a firework sparking up along her spine and into her brain, making her eyes blur and cross.

“Rita!” Mistah Jet squeezes her hand and she would squeeze back! It’s just her arms suddenly feel all woobly for one and for two she’s spending all her big ol’ brain power concentrating on stayin’ upright and keeping just as still as Mz. Vespa needs, even as she shivers through beads of hot-cold sweat that itch all over her body like bites from no-see-em’s. 

Vespa snorts quietly. “You’re fine, I’m almost done,” she rolls her eyes, and despite herself, Rita relaxes a little bit.

It ain’t even been a long time! Not any more than it would take to watch two episodes of _Sellout: Lose Your Morals for Fame and Fortune or Rot in Obscurity_. 

There was just. It was… There was a lot of blood, is all. And there was a moment, when she was holding her side and running for the Ruby, when her hand slipped in it and she touched something inside herself that MIGHT have been bone? Maybe? But it also could have been something else and it might not have even happened at all!

Rita doesn’t really remember how they got to the Ruby. 

Well, besides running like all get out, that is. But she doesn’t remember the route they took or any interesting things they passed by or the ride from the satellite to the ship. It all sorta blurs together in her brain like a badly shot montage or a weird edit by some indie director who insists her streams are 'films' and 'art' and 'you wouldn't get it anyway.' 

“I’m okay!” She hears herself say and forces herself to sniffle, gulping down the big, slimy ball of mucus that wants to clog her throat. “Really, I don’t even feel it! Much. It’s all buzzing and tingly mostly.” She makes herself smile and doesn’t mention how the numbing makes the hurt feel deeper, like it’s burrowing inside her like that one stream where the spider-lady wanted to lay her eggs- “Wow! All the episodes I watched of _Hot Doctor City: A City of Doctors_ —”

Mistah Jet grumbles quietly, but Rita ignores him. He’s got lots of opinions on the _Hot Doctor_ spin-offs, including but not limited to, _Hot Doctor Island, Hot Doctor Cruise, Hot Doctor Satellite_ , where all the hot doctors are robots, except for the main doctor, Dr. Ann Droid who is a cyborg who has to hide her identity and-! Anyway, Rita doesn’t really wanna have the discussion about why Hot Doctor Resident Dr. Will Tickel couldn’t have killed the patient who she found out was the secret secondary donor for her implanted baby ...again. 

“—weren’t anything like this!”

“That is because the _Hot Doctor_ series focuses more on the lives of the doctors and less on patient care,” Mistah Jet says. 

Very nicely, Rita does not roll her eyes the way she would if she was havin’ this conversation with...

With anybody else.

“You say that but last time we watched _Hot Doctor Highway: A Race for the Cure_ you made me watch episode 36, you know, the one where Ms. Shelby Daytona—"

"Yes, I am familiar with the episode," Jet tries to interrupt. 

"—4 times before you were okay to watch any more."

Before Mistah Jet can defend himself, not that he could, Rita knows exactly how much he likes the patient storylines on _Hot Doctor Highway_ , a comms call goes off.

Not hers. Rita knows that immediately ‘cause she’s got a different special sound for each and every member of the Tart Panache. She starts to wonder if Mz. Vespa maybe has a special alert for Captain A, what with them being in love and all, when Jet rearranges their tangled hands in order to answer it.

“Buddy,” he says, with none of the usual back-and-forth teasing they do when they’re in a good mood.

“Oh, hello darling!” Captain A’s voice is just a little sharp and she sounds just a little frazzled, which just goes to show how badly Rita screwed this whole mission up by gettin’ hurt, ‘cause Mz. Captain Buddy don’t usually ever sound frazzled, even when she is. 

Well. Not unless…

“I assume the rest of the mission has completed,” Mistah Jet says. He says it, he doesn’t ask it. It’s like he’s sayin’, ‘oh please Captain Buddy tell me nothin’ else has gone wrong.’ 

“Why, of course dearest, everything went just swimmingly,” Captain A starts in on a long convoluted metaphor just as Mz. Vespa does something that makes even Rita’s teeth ache. 

Oh. 

Takes more effort then probably anything Rita’s ever done before ever to unclench her jaw. Okay, well maybe not as much effort as the thing with the robots, or the other thing with the robots, or the time she had to apologize to her sister for not tellin’ her that her wife was two-timin’ her with their mutual ex, but that time she don’t really think was her fault, ‘cause Bernadette and Anita had both been dating Bonnie and they were all real sweet together so maybe she’d been holdin’ out some hope that ‘Detta would make up with Bonnie but instead she ended up crashing on Rita’s couch for two months, eating all her ice cream and mocking Rita’s favourite streams. As if _The Prosecution Rests_ is better than _Rule of Law: We Make the Rules Now_.

“Hacker’s all set, Bud. Just finished sealing her back up,” Mz. Vespa is saying, when Rita’s heart finally stops drumming her ears. 

“Good! I delayed as long as I could but there’s a hurricane heading your way, darling, and his name is—”

“Rita!” Mistah Steel swings around the door, yelling probably louder than he meant to. Mistah Steel is always a little louder then he ever means to be. But that’s okay. Rita’s pretty loud too. She had to be, livin’ in a big house all packed full of two grandparents, three parents, one uncle, lots of siblings and three cousins. She doesn't know how Mistah Steel got to be so loud, what with his only growin' up with one brother, but she guesses all families are different in that. And probably a buncha other ways. 

The one eye he’s got left after that whole ‘disappear with a confusing voicemail, scaring your Rita half to death’ thing and then the ‘jam a computer into your brain cause the secretly evil mayor of our town says so’ thing jumps around from Mz. Vespa and her tray of tools to Mistah Jet and then lands on her and Rita don’t mean it to, but she feels both her chins start to wobble again. 

He lurches forward and she doesn't even think about it. One second her hands are warm between Mistah Jet's and a little sweaty but that’s pretty normal and the next they’re splayed out in front of her and her back is leaving the bed as she strains forward. She reaches for him — 

Then whatever Mz. Vespa did to her side pulls and —

Feels like between one big, gasping breath and the next he's beside her bed, wrapping his arms around her and letting her bury her face in his shoulder and she's sobbing, sobbing, sobbing out all the huge, messy emotions she'd pushed aside til right this moment. 

"Rita, oh my god, are you okay?”

"It was awful, Mistah Steel—" 

"Did someone hurt you?" 

"— we were runnin' and the guards were firing and it wasn't nothin' like the training we did with Mz. Buddy—"

“ _What happened_?"

"— and I got blood all over my new dress!" Rita wails. They’re talking all over and under and on top of one another but it all fits together in her head like one of those easy puzzles made for kids.

“Vespa, you didn’t cut off her new dress did you?” Mistah Steel demands, and Rita ain’t even got to look to know he’s jutting his chin out, all stubborn. 

Mz. Vespa sputters. “No, I didn’t cut her dress off!” 

“She did try, as it would have been much simpler, but Rita began to cry and so we allowed her to take it off normally. It is behind the privacy screen,” Mistah Jet says over Mz. Vespa’s embarrassed growling.

“Oh, well that’s fine then. Just soak it in cold water,” Mistah Steel shrugs, rubbing her cold arms briskly and trying to smooth the crinkly hospital gown Mz. Vespa gave her over her side while also not touching her side. 

Rita huffs in watery indignation, “That ain’t the point!”

“Oh, wow I would _love_ for you to have a point,” Mistah Steel snarks, and just like that the waterworks she just managed to get done all come rushing back and she can’t talk no more for how hard she’s cryin’. Mistah Steel says, “Hey, hey, it’s okay!” and he rubs her back and it’s all just as sweet as it is awkward and Rita’s a little worried about her boss...ex-boss... Mistah Steel being a robot again cause he’s being real, like, actually comforting — but then he ruins it by adding, “Jet, is she okay?"

“Clearly, despite her previous interactions with us, she is not.”

“Yeah, yeah, delayed trauma response, I’ll put it on her chart,” Vespa says.

Finally, Rita gets enough of her breath back to burst out: “It hurt so much!” 

She hadn’t said it earlier, when Mistah Jet was askin’ her if she was alright or when Mz. Vespa asked her to rate her pain. It seemed silly then, in front of either of them, to say somethin’ like ‘this hurts more than anything has ever hurt in my whole life.’ 

Rita’s been lucky, and she knows she’s been lucky. She don’t get sick too often, and despite the doctor visits for her leg braces, she’s only ever been hurt enough to go to the hospital once before. And not for anything exciting either! Her car was in the shop so she thought it’d be an exciting new adventure to take the subway to work! Only, she tripped and fell down the stairs and broke her wrist and banged her head up real bad. 

And boy the doctor’s at Hyperion General ain’t nothin’ like the doctors from _Hot Doctor City: A City of Doctors_ ‘cause she was in the waiting room for _hours_ before Mistah Steel got there and started yelling a whole bunch about brain damage and her havin’ a fever and how no one even gave her some wet paper towel to get the blood out of her hair… He fired her five times between gettin’ x-rays, waiting on the doctor, and gettin’ her wrist fixed, and he picked fights with all the nurses, and wouldn’t let her put _Rule of Law: We Make the Rules Now_ on while they were waitin’ — but he also made sure to be the first person to sign her cast. And he drove her home. And stayed with her to make sure her head was okay. And drove her to work every day til her cast was off.

“Well, yeah! Rita you got shot!” Mistah Steel says, and not like he does when he thinks something is obvious but it’s really not, but more like when she was makin’ lunch that one time and tried to test the knife to see if it needed to be sharpened — like cooks on the foodie shows always do, but she ‘almost cut herself’ and ‘Rita put down the knife you’re gonna give me a heart attack.’ 

“Nuh-uh, there’s no ‘well yeah,’ about it, you always make it look easy!” 

So there. 

“I do not!”

“Do too!”

“How does someone make getting shot look easy?” he scoffs.

“Mistah Steel, I love you a lot, and you’re one of the bravest ladies I ever met, but you’re real weird about pain. You whined about a papercut for almost three whole days—”

“It wouldn't heal and I kept forgetting it was there and putting sanitizer on it,” he grumbles quietly. 

Rita talks over him with the grace of long familiarity, “— but one time you came back from a case with your whole side bruised so bad that I had to call an ambulance —”

“You didn’t _have_ to.”

“—and they said it was lucky I did cause you had major internal bleeding, which don’t make much sense to me, ‘cause —”

“That’s where the blood is supposed to be!” he finishes alongside her. “Hey, budge over.”

“Why do I gotta share my hospital bed?” Rita pouts, ignoring the fact that —

“Uh, cause you won’t let go and if I stay hunched over like this you’re gonna have to find me a bell tower somewhere?”

“I could let go,” Rita lies, and tries to blink fresh tears out of her burning eyes. “I could, too. Anytime I wanted to!”

“Don’t you dare, I’ll cry.” Mistah Steel says, and Rita might know he’s half joking but she’s known the man twenty odd years and she’s maybe seen him cry _once_ , maybe, and that’s debatable cause there was smoke and sweat and… Anyway, she’s already crying so if Mistah Steel starts to cry too then-! “Move it, it’s like you don’t even _want_ to watch _Tidal Werewolves Two: Mooring Moon_.” 

Her mouth drops open and she’s so surprised she don’t even flinch when Mistah Jet slides his hand under her knees and helps move her over a little without pulling her side and making Mz. Vespa come back from wherever she’s gone to yell at them. 

(It ain’t that she forgot Mistah Jet was there, but she wasn’t lookin’ at him and he was being real quiet and...okay she forgot just a little bit.) 

“But you don’t even like _Tidal Werewolves_!”

“Nope, but you do.”

“And I ain’t even got any snacks!”

Mistah Steel takes out his comms and starts sorting through the menus. He scowls as he does it, and grumbles under his breath and literally shakes it like a maraca once but he doesn’t ask for her help and just like that she’s cryin’ _again._ “Ransom,” he calls, “you missed your cue!”

“My, how clumsy of me,” Mistah Ransom says, soundin’ not at all as valiant-knight-off-to-rescue-a-damsel as he usually does. 

And no wonder ‘cause he’s got his arms full of all Rita’s favourite snacks! 

Oh! Oh, there’s the salmon dust cruchies and the licorice squid, and the wasabi pickle chips, and the grape flavored grape nuts and the malt-butter popcorn and —! 

Mistah Ransom drops a quick kiss on Mistah Steel’s cheek while he drops the snacks much less gracefully over their laps. “Here you are, love. Miss Rita. I… I’m very glad you’re going to be okay.”

“Aw,” Rita sniffles, “me too.”

Beside her, Juno shakes a little and she can see he’s biting his lip. “Wow, you two are worse than I am.”

“That is not true,” Jet says immediately. 

“Hey!”

“Shhh, Mistah Steel it’s starting!”

Mistah Steel pauses the stream and Rita unpauses it. 

Mistah Steel pauses it. Rita unpauses it. 

“Ransom hasn’t even sat down yet!” 

“He can catch up, c’mon Mistah Steel I ain’t never seen this one!”

“And, you should open your snack before we start ‘cause you’re just gonna get mad if you don’t.”

“Oh.” That was actually a good reason not to start so soon. “Well it’s my hospital bed party so someone else can struggle with the snacks,” Rita declares, half on account of not having her scissors with her and half because she’d have to move from being octopus suckered against Mistah Steel to even think about reaching for a snack and — Oh! Maybe Mistah Ransom brought her the octopus sucker suckers! 

“Not it.” Mistah Steel says immediately. 

She snuggles more firmly into his side as Mistah Jet loses the rock-paper-scissors to start opening the snacks and Mistah Steel fiddles with the settings for subtitles, getting lost and visibly stopping himself from asking her to do it for him. 

Mz. Vespa and Captain A are probably gonna join halfway through, and Mz. Vespa’s gonna have a whole lot of questions that Mz. Captain Buddy will ask for her and Mistah Steel will get more and more annoyed even though he does the same thing and Mistah Jet will eventually tell them that if they wanted to know the plot they should have been on time and that will be fun. 

But right now, Rita’s got a stream to watch, and salmon dusts to crunchy and the familiar sharp smell of blaster-fire mixed with Mistah Ransom’s cologne under her cheek and… it’s nice. 


End file.
